U.S. Pat. No. 7,752,419 describes a method and system for controlling the use of the capacity of a logically partitioned data processing system, comprising physical resources that are shared between a plurality of logic partitions, in which the capacity of the logic partitions is managed so as to control the consumption of the physical data processing resources.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,096,469 describes a method for imposing capacity ceilings such as those imposed by the software license agreements in an information processing system in which a physical machine is divided into a plurality of logic partitions, each of which is allocated a defined portion of resources of the processor by a logic partition manager.
A software license manager specifies a maximum authorized consumption of the resources of the processor by a program being executed in one of the logic partitions.
A workload manager also being executed in the partition measures the actual consumption of the processor resources by the logic partition over a specified average calculation interval and compares it with the authorized maximum consumption.
If the actual consumption exceeds the authorized maximum consumption, the workload manager calculates an upper limit (“soft capping”) and interacts with the logic partition manager in order to set a ceiling on the actual consumption of the resources of the processor by the partition in conformity with the calculated limit.
In order to provide additional flexibility, the partitions are assigned a phantom weight that the logic partition manager adds to the total weight of the partition in order to determine whether the partition has exceeded its authorized share of processor resources in the context of setting a ceiling on the resources.
For software under license, the logic partition thus becomes a “container” having a processing capacity less than that of the whole of the machine.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,015,335 describes a logically partitioned host computer system comprising host processors (host CPU) divided into a plurality of host processors (host CPU) of a host configuration and an instruction function topology executed by a host processor specifying a change in topology of the guest configuration.
The change in topology preferably changes the polarization of host processors, the polarization related to the quantity of a host CPU resource is supplied to a host processor.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,904,405 relates to a server, the partitioned data processing system of which is divided into a plurality of logic partitions.
In a system and a method such as the management of a computer system, each task in the course of execution of a workload that can be classified on the basis of the criticality of the time, and the groups of logic partitions can be defined freely.
The processing capacity limits for the logic partitions in a group of logic partitions are based on defined processing capacity thresholds and on an iterative determination of the capacity necessary for the tasks of the workload with critical duration.
The workload may be balanced between the logic partitions in a group in order to prevent the surplus processing capacity being used to execute the critical workload, not the time on a logic partition when another logic partition executes only the tasks of the critical-duration workload when faced with a processing deficit.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2014/0373010, which does not relate to the field of the present disclosure, discloses a resource management system for virtual machines.
According to this solution of the prior art, a computer receives information associated with one or more virtual machines, comprising use and workload information associated with each virtual machine of one or more virtual machines. In the solution described, the computer analyzes the received information associated with one or more virtual machines and determines the virtual machines for reallocation of resources.
This solution relates to a particular context, specific to the AIX (the acronym of Advanced Interactive eXecutive) operating system oriented toward the virtualization of the processors, disks and network.
The purpose of the solution described in this document is control of the performance on another platform rather than control of the capacity of use of a partitioned system in order to limit access to the processor resources of the partitions Pi according to the value of parameters DC_Pi(t) for setting a ceiling on the capacity of each of the partitions.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2013/0055277 discloses a data processing system for load management and balancing in a plurality of systems managed in a logic partitioning data processing system. In response to a critical logic partitioning requiring additional resources, the mechanism determines whether one or more managed systems have resources available for satisfying the resource requirements of the critical partition. The mechanism performs at least one separation migration operation in order to move at least one logic partition between the managed systems in response to the determination that one or more managed systems have resources for satisfying the resource requirements of the critical partition. The mechanism performs at least one dynamic logic partition operation in order to allocate resources to at least one of the one or more critical logic partitions reacting to the execution of the operation of the at least one partition migration.
This document also does not concern the dynamic management of the parameter limiting access to the partition resources of the server.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/244215 describes a solution for balancing access between a plurality of logic partitions on the resources of the physical system of a computer system by using system virtualization. Each of the logic partitions is classified, first of all during a start-up period, according to a level allocated to the use of the dispatch window. The performance measurements of one or more of the resources of the physical system are determined in association with one or more logic partitions. The performance indicators are determined at a level independent of the hardware programming interruptions.
This is a simple general technological background, affording no teaching concerning the dynamic management of the parameters for limiting access to the resources of the partitions.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,007,276 relates to an example of management of groups of partitions of a data processing environment, comprising the modification of a composition of a group of a plurality of partitions of the data processing environment and dynamic modification of a sharable resource allocated to their group, usable simultaneously by a plurality of partitions.
In the solutions of the prior art, the sharing of the resources between each of the partitions does not make it possible to ensure satisfactory performance under all conditions of use. For example, to satisfy a very high and transient exceptional requirement for resources, the server must be parameterized according to the peak consumption induced, which leads to oversizing the server and, therefore, to increasing the complexity of the hardware means, and the power consumption and heating produced by the server, until the functioning of the server is seriously degraded.
The solution proposed by U.S. Pat. No. 8,904,405 uses a method for limiting the resources in each of the partitions, depending on parameters taking into account the prioritization and the classification of the workloads, which are determined by automatic processing operations executed by the work task management program. These data thus calculated are not completely relevant for ensuring optimization of the consumption of resources. For example, if the partition is limited to a given capacity according to information collected from the task manager, in a situation where many tasks are classified as “non-priority,” the allocation of resources will be falsified. This is because the task manager is based on the available resources and on all the tasks the execution of which it must ensure (whatever their priority) in order to ensure correct execution and prioritization of these tasks. In the solutions of the prior art, the resource management policy is determined automatically solely by the task manager (WLM), which controls the execution of non-priority tasks according to the available resources, having regard to the overall setting of a ceiling on the consumption of the resources determined for all the work tasks of the partition.